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10 Steps To Being #1 On Google

The title says that there are 10 steps to being number one on Google. The truth is that there is only method — and it is an absolute Google domination machine.

I will go so far as to say that there is NO other method for getting to the top of Google that is better.It’s a method so intensely powerful that not only will you obtain top Google rankings, but people will soon begin seeking you out specifically, without considering anyone else.

I can also say that this method can get you an insane amount of traffic from a wide and ever growing variety of sources.

What magic method am I talking about? The method can be summed up in two simple words:

Be Worthy

Now before I continue, let me say that this isn’t a cop out, because there’s a little more to it than that.What I’m saying is that your site needs to be worthy of your visitors time to visit.

Let me put it to you another way.I don’t care what you do, I don’t care what you sell, or what your site is about, you are in the information business.Your job is to educate and inform your visitors as to why they should do business with you.

It means putting stuff onto your site that is so good people WANT to read it AND to SHARE IT. It means putting information on your site that is so good, people want to TALK ABOUT YOU.

When people talk about you, they link to you; when they link to you, that helps your Google ranking. Not only that, but it also means that other sites from all over the web are also sending traffic to you.

In fact, for MOST of my own online businesses, I get FAR more traffic from other sites than I do from Google itself, even though my sites completely dominate in the searches.

So how exactly do you become worthy? How exactly do you get people to want to talk about you?

It starts by wanting to know enough about your market that you can be a thought leader.

{mospagebreak title=The Ten Steps}

That said, let me break down what you can do (and give you the 10 steps to total Google domination):

Use lists By this I don’t just mean to list things; I mean you should actually create a “7 ways to…” and explain each of the seven ways. People love lists, and if you have a good list and good explanations, they are often heavily linked to. Clearly I did it with this article.

Write posts that need to be read right nowObviously we all strive for this, but I’m talking about something more here. I mean you should write posts that are “time sensitive.” They have to be read within a day or a week, or else the information isn’t valid anymore. People should know you write these so that they feel compelled to keep up with what you’re saying.

Become an expertNow I talked about this one above, but here’s the thing. It’s pretty tough to say anything that anyone is really going to want to link to if you don’t know what you’re talking about. Flip that around — become an expert, and you’ll find there’s more to say than there is time to say it; and it’ll all be GREAT stuff. A hint to doing this, to becoming an expert, is to digest the good information of other experts in your market every single day (RSS is great for this).

Write posts that are timeless Above I talked about the need to write posts that are time sensitive. Well, you also want to produce “evergreen” content (as Jeff Walker calls it). This is content that will be as valid ten years from now as it is today. (Not meaning to toot my own horn, but this article is an example of that). The idea here is for your site to be an invaluable resource for your market. Take a look at SEO Chat here and you see this happening all the time. You’ll see a mix of content that is valid only for a short time alternating with content that will be as valid in 10 years as it was when it was posted.

Share what you know without strings attachedThe idea here is for you to be so generous with your expertise that people literally become dependent on you and your posts.SethGodin is like this for me. I read his blog religiously. I find it so good that when he writes a book I’m the first person in line buying the thing. Why? Because I absolutely know that it will be awesome. How do I know that? Because he shares his expertise so generously that there is no question he knows what he’s talking about.

Write short posts that can be read in secondsAll too often, when someone is an expert at something, they feel the need to write long posts that take forever to read. The truth is that you need to mix it up a little bit. Occasionally just write a few short sentences; little more than an idea expressed “out loud” on your site. This will make you seem much more like a “thought leader.”EdDale talks about this (being a thought leader) a lot. When you become one of the “thought leaders” for your market, people will not only seek you out over anyone else in your market, they’ll pay more for whatever you sell, simply because it’s you selling it.

Write long postsI just talked about the need to write short posts, and now here I am saying that you should write long posts. The reason for that is simple; like I said above, you need to mix it up. Further, you will never be thought of as a leader in your market without proving your expertise, and that means an occasional long post. I personally like to do this at least once a week, and I really shoot for twice a week. Then twice a week I write something shorter, often little more than a sentence or two. EVEN BETTER, consider a series of posts that takes your readers on a several months long educational journey that covers one specific topic in ever more specific detail. Show your readers in no uncertain terms that you know your stuff.

Have an opinion!Far too many people try not to offend anyone. Personally, I think that’s a mistake. If you’re actually an expert at something, you’ll have opinions on things. Occasionally your opinions will clash with the opinions of others. This can create a lot of link love between you and set you in the same “echelon” as those other experts on top of it.

In fact while you are at it – link liberallySo many people get so caught up in not “squandering their page rank” with links to other people/sites that they forget several things. First, Google looks at who you link to as a determination of your own authority. Authority sites link to a lot of other sites (look at how many outbound links can be found here on SEO Chat). Non-authority sites don’t link out to others. Which do you want to be? Not only that, but when you show that you’re willing to share the link love, others are much more willing to do the same back to you. Further, if you want to truly demonstrate expertise in your market, you’ll want to link to extremely useful but little known resources. This helps to prove you know the market.

Create your own words/turns of phrase Now this one is a bit tough; however, as you become more of an expert, it does become easier. The reason you want to coin a term for your market is simple — it gets “linked” to you as the expert that created it. As the term grows in usage in your market, your name grows as an expert as well, which means more actual links to your site, more traffic, and higher rankings to boot.

But Wait! There’s More!

Even though I said there were 10 steps, and above we have ten, what I would like to do now is give you three more “bonus” tips you can use, completely FREE! Of course that’s a bit of a tongue in cheek stab at all of the horrible marketing that’s out there. However, this paragraph is also a little bit of a tip in and of itself. What I mean here is that you want to make sure that you are constantly underpromising and overdelivering. Give people MORE than you said you would. That said, let’s talk about some more specific things you can do to dominate Google.

11. Interview Others
This one is really kind of a “sneaky” way of becoming a recognized expert in your market somewhat quickly. By interviewing other experts, you become associated with those people. They’ll want to link to your interviews, which gets you traffic from their sites and the Google ranking bump.

12. Be a real person
In other words, have a real name, with a real address that gets answered. The Apple Corporation isn’t an expert; Steve Jobs was. People are experts, not companies. Yes, a given company can be known for selling certain specific products, but only people are experts. What you want to do is be an expert and link your expertise to your company (assuming you have one). Also, by becoming an expert yourself, by having people recognize your name, you gain still more search terms for which you can control and obtain traffic.

13. Encourage Digging/Retweeting/Sharing
Let me be clear: this goes beyond simply providing a mechanism for doing it. I mean literally ASK people to “retweet” (or whatever). Obviously you won’t want to do this every time, but occasionally you should. Increasing your “socialmediaengagement,” as NewsLab puts it, is a GREAT way of obtaining traffic and high quality links to your site.

All of these things are designed to do something very specific, and that’s to help you become a recognized expert in your market. Through that expertise you’ll naturally become the overwhelmingly dominant player in the search engines at the same time you are getting hordes of traffic from a wide range of other sources.

Here’s the thing you need to remember: doing it this way will take some time. However, you won’t have the constant worry of Google algorithm changes. You’ll be doing things the way that every search engine wishes everyone would be doing it; simply becoming a great site, with great content, with a strong authority.

You simply need to create information that is worthy and make doing it a daily passion.